EE to invest £275m in improving call quality next year

Operator to upgrade 6,000 2G sites and increase capacity on 1,600 3G sites as it aims to achieve a call success rate of 99.5 per cent

EE is investing £275 million in mobile calls next year as it strives to reach new standards in phone call quality and reliability.

The operator is currently upgrading 11,000 2G sites and doubling capacity on 7,000 3G sites. Next year, more than 5,000 old 2G sites will be upgraded, with capacity increased on an additional 5,500 sites on the 3G network.

This year, EE has upgraded 20 year old 2G equipment on over 6,000 sites to reduce dropped calls by 50 per cent and increased the capacity on 1,600 3G sites to support 50 per cent more calls.

That has resulted in the operator’s highest ever call success rate of 99.2 per cent, carrying more than one billion calls every week. Next year EE is targeting a dropped call rate of 0.5 per cent.

EE CEO Olaf Swantee said: “While we consistently outperform on the standard UK benchmark for voice call quality and reliability, I don’t believe the benchmark is right. I think the UK mobile industry can do better, and we intend to improve the experience for our customers, taking our quality and reliability to levels to those achieved by other operators across Europe.

“This year, we have been focusing a large amount of our activity and investment on offering consumers the most reliable, highest quality phone call experience. I’m proud to say that we have reached our highest ever call success rate – 99.2% – while carrying over one billion calls every week. But we can go even further.

“For the majority of our customers, being able to make a phone call when they need to is still the vital aspect of the mobile experience. Innovative, high-speed data services receive most of the attention in the mobile industry as they are changing the way people communicate, connect, trade and interact. However, we carried more voice calls on our network than ever before this year, and we know that call reliability is essential for our customers. That’s why we plan to invest £275m in our voice call service in 2014 as we strive to set new standards in call quality and reliability.”